The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a thin film magnetic head and, more particularly, to a method of manufacturing a magnetoresistive head for high density recording and reading.
A magnetoresistive (MR) head or a giant magnetoresistive (GMR) head used as a read head of a high density magnetic recording head has been required to be adaptable to a track with a further reduced width for attaining high recording density.
Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 6-267843) discloses a lift-off method using a two-layered resist. Specifically, this lift-off method involves forming a mask having an undercut in a two-layered film using a photoresist for the upper layer portion and polydimethyl glutar imide (PMGI) for the lower layer portion by the combination of irradiation of UV-rays and far UV-rays and twice development, and using a sputtering method as a method of forming the film. Patent Document 2 (Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-64054) discloses a lift-off pattern prepared by using an organic film of a three-layered structure. Specifically, it discloses a method of disposing a resist having high resistance to dry etching for the uppermost layer as a resist pattern, forming an undercut in each of two-layered organic films as the underlayer thereof by a dry etching method using the lift-off pattern as a mask into a lift-off resist shape, and forming metal inter-connections by a lift-off method.
Patent Document 3 (Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2003-131386) discloses a frame plating method of a thin film magnetic head using a resist pattern including a lower layer pattern, an intermediate layer pattern and an upper layer pattern.